Intel defends PC, goes all-in on ULV, and speeds up Moore’s Law

At an investor meeting today, Intel defended the PC against the claim that ARM …

At an annual investor relations event today in San Francisco, Intel execs took to the stage to defend the PC against the claims that "tablets" (currently just a euphemism for "iPads") will do it in, and to make a comprehensive case that the future belongs not to ARM but to Intel.

Of course, what Intel means by "PC" is much thinner, lighter, and more appliance-like than the Windows-based desktops and servers that the term has historically brought to mind. Indeed, the company was up-front about its attempt to redefine the PC in a direction that's essentially embodied by Apple's current MacBook Air—a thin, power-sipping, tablet/laptop mash-up that may or may not have a copy of Windows installed somewhere on it.

Intel's demo rooms and stage were filled with slender prototypes. Gone were the painfully bulky MIDs of previous years, and in their place were a suite of relatively attractive tablet and laptop prototypes that one hopes will at some point deliver on Intel's promise of a ten-hour battery life.

All of this change is part of Intel's plan to "reinvent and re-energize the PC," as Intel CEO Paul Otellini put it in his opening keynote. But the reinvention isn't limited to just the form factor.

ULV: the new normal

Otellini also announced that Intel is making a fundamental shift in the way that the company thinks about and approaches the design of its notebook chips. Until now, the bulk of Intel's notebook chips are design to draw around 35 watts of power—many of its notebook parts are lower, and some are higher, but 35 watts is the center point for Intel's portable lines. Going forward, however, the new center point will be in the 10 to 15 watt range.

To understand what a radical shift this is, consider the fact that the newly announced Core i5 and i7 ULV (ultra-low voltage) chips have a TDP of 17W. So, what Otellini is saying with this announcement is that, instead of being an exotic, expensive, and late-coming niche in Intel's mobile lineup, ULV processors are the new normal.

Under this new regime, Intel's SoCs will scale from about 500 milliwatts up to 10 watts, and the notebook chips will scale up from there.

The tablet Who Must Not Be Named

The iPad's success is clearly a sore spot for Intel, no matter how much the company protests that it isn't. The presenters' slide decks contained a number of images of tablets at various points, not one of which was an iPad. Throughout the day, the Apple's tablet was thunderingly absent from all of the tablet and portable talk.

In fact, at one point, Otellini put up a slide showing the growth of "smart devices," by which he meant only smartphones and laptops—no tablets or smart TVs. He justified leaving out the iPad tablet because PC and phone growth allegedly dominates tablet growth to such a degree that there was no point in putting it in.

Then there was another telling slide from Otellini, which showed laptop Internet traffic (in MB/month) outgrowing smartphone and tablet traffic by 3X. The conclusion that Otellini drew from this data was that laptops are growing much faster than smartphones and tablets. But anyone who has used a mobile data plan on both a tablet and a laptop knows that, for whatever mix of reasons, laptops are much bigger data hogs than tablets over the course of normal use. In other words, all that the slide really showed was that laptop users use a lot more data than smartphone and tablet users.

The reason that the iPad gives Intel heartburn is twofold. First, there's the fact that iOS doesn't run on x86, and probably never will. But the ARM-only iPad is also the one successful example of a tablet that anyone has seen so far, and that success has been driven by Apple's (apparently unique) talent for delivering an overwhelmingly compelling experience for end-users and, to a lesser extent, developers. So Otellini knows that his tablets will always have to compete with Apple's, and that can't be a happy prospect.

The second, and closely related, challenge that Intel's tablet ambitions face is the sorry state of the tablet competition. When Otellini mentioned tablet OSes, he dropped the names Android, Meego, and Windows quite a bit. Not one of these is even close to being a compelling iOS alternative at the moment, and Otellini's lack of excitement for any of them was evidenced by the fact that he didn't bother trying to show even one of them off. In fact, on the Meego front, Otellini made a few painful jokes and references to Nokia's very public rejection of the joint Intel/Nokia effort, all of which drew sympathetic laughter from the audience.

The upshot of all of this is that Intel's tablet is a horse without a rider. It could be a prize-winning thoroughbred, but all of the potential jockeys are so bloated and generally unfit for the saddle that it's not at all obvious how Intel's entrant can truly compete.

Countering the iPad with a laptop

Intel's answer to the tablet dilemma comes in three parts. First, Otellini declared up-front that real innovation in tablet computing has yet to fully kick in. "The tablet race is nowhere near finished," he said. "There's going to be a tremendous amount of experimentation here for several years." So, at some point, the argument went, someone besides Apple will make a tablet worth buying. For our part, we're hopefully optimistic that this is indeed the case.

Intel's second part is that the tablet doesn't so much replace the laptop as it augments it. One of the Intel presenters argued that a tablet is really a second or third or fourth device, and not a replacement for the PC. The strategy here was to pitch the tablet as a toy for the affluent; the same presenter claimed that half of iPad buyers in mature markets have income levels of $100,000 a year or over. He also pointed to the fact that, this past quarter, the MacBook line actually outgrew the iPad.

The third answer to the cannibalization story is that, even if tablets were to cannibalize up to a third of PC growth, it won't knock more than a few percentage points off the PC market's compound annual growth rate (CAGR). In other words, the PC market is so much larger and is growing so fast that even significant cannibalization by the still-nascent tablet market won't hurt it more than a bit.

Smartphone and Atom update

Intel didn't have any major smartphone news today. The company merely reiterated its plans to have the first Intel-powered smartphones hit the market in the early part of 2012.

Otellini referenced the Nokia breakup and said that Intel is shopping the reference design that it made with the phonemaker around to other OEMs.

Intel also took a moment to reiterate that its 32nm, 22nm, and 14nm versions of Atom will all be out over the next three years, with 22nm dropping next year and 14nm the year after that. This represents an acceleration of Intel's process roadmap—the chipmaker is essentially stepping on the gas to get Atom iterations out faster, cycling through the tick-tock cadence at a quicker rate.

Intel also put its upcoming 22nm Atom core, codenamed Silvermont, on a slide for the first time. Silvermont is speculated to be the first out-of-order Atom design. This is probably true, and it will give the part a significant boost in performance vs. previous-generation Atoms.

Following Silvermont at 14nm is Airmont. Not much is known about Airmont beyond the fact that it's due in 2014.

82 Reader Comments

if 22nm is next year and 14nm is the year after that, wouldn't it put Airmont in 2013? Or is Airmont some variation of 14nm chips?

All in all though, it makes a lot of sense to me. A tablet isn't a better environment, I can't do any real work on it, because either the apps or the interface isn't there. It just has a whole lot of advantages in portability and usability, but if Intel can deliver a full environment in a 2lb device then I'd be all over it.

Glad to see the move towards portability though, having spent 3 hours walking around Vancouver with my old Acer laptop slung over my shoulder, wishing I could have worked solely off an iPad that day.

The stress on -lack- of mention of iPad, is to highlight how Intel refused to acknowledge its existence, even though iPad is the 'major player' in the current Tablet market; IOS is similarly "major", compared to Android or Windows Mobile, but wasn't mentioned. Significantly, iPad doesn't use Intel gear, so they're avoiding it like the plague. It's just an example of corporate spin, really. Dumb corporate spin at that, if they don't include mention of THE major player in the markets they're trying to expand into.

That is, the article stressed 'what about the iPad, eh, Intel?', and then went on to reflect what Intel said (rather than what iPad could/couldn't 'do').

Dismissing it as a puff piece for Apple/iPad is disingenuous; there are rabid Apple fan-boys, and there are rabid anti-Apple haters, I don't think either group is going to win any friends/converts by public sneering at the other group.

So: intel presented a new strategy to compete with ARM in the tablet space. A pathetic but not surprising attempt to shift attention away from tablets was made to distract from the fact it has no products in that space yet.

I would have welcomed an analysis of why Intel has a long way to go before it's chips, SoC's and chipsets are ready for tablet use. None of which has to do with the iPad, apple or iOS. iOS was a smartphone OS and apple would be crazy to attempt to port it to x86 given the advantage it has in the vast apps selection.

There's plenty of other ways in which intel doesn't get the upcoming mobility revolution (centred on smartphones and tablets) but the article doesn't touch on those, except to say that the iPad uses ARM and the ipad doesn't use windows. Wow.What about intel's excessive focus on laptops which are now seen by many as an intermediate form factor between the PC and the tablet? True you can't do much work on a tablet today, but that won't be the case always.

More pertinent is the fact that none of the upcoming announced tablets based on Android, WebOS etc uses x86 chips, but instead rely on ARM based architectures too. That is the real issue for intel today.

And making statements like "<android>... is not close to being a compelling iOS alternative at the moment" completely destroy the writer's credibility. I think everyone on the planet outside of No.1 Infinite Loop might disagree with you there.

A tablet is not as efficient to work on as a laptop or workstation. Its screen is not as nice to view as 60" wall mounted Bravia, the game interface is not as intuitative as a game controller or mouse/keyboard is. It lacks in precision tools when you use your fingers, and your fingers are well...in the way of what you're trying to look at all the time. Its not quite portable enough to put in your pocket either, although I'm sure many are convinced there's no problem slinging one over your shoulder or something similar...fine for casual use.

Address these issues (kinect like game controller?, built in hi-res projector, magic keyboard and mouse, and invisible hands), and I see plenty of reason to buy one. Right now they're just a toy thats captured the public mind...But trying to pretend its a practical workplace tool..or better yet, replacement for the laptop, workstation and Television. Suuuurreee.....

hahaha I'm watching an iPad commercial right now, all the camera angles are from a super low angle - not the typical viewing angle, because Apple KNOWS how much it sucks to look at your hands in front of the image you're moving around.

"First, there's the fact that iOS doesn't run on x86, and probably never will."

I strongly disagree with this comment.

iOS is based on MacOSX, which runs solely on intel x86 as of 10.6. Yes apple have their own "in house" processor the A4/5 (and I use the term "in-house" loosely), but that does not mean that that they "probably never will" choose an atom equivalent if it meets their design requirements.

The macbook air is a perfect example of this - why didn't apple go with the atom? - because it didn't provide enough grunt for the apps that were intended to run on it at launch. Intel didn't lose, it is still selling chips..

Further, intel have nothing to fear from apple specifically - as shown above, (intel driven) macbook sales have been shooting up and surpassed ipad growth if you include the MB air. This means more x86 chips and more demand on them.

Anyhow, I digress

This article to me says:1. ULV is the new normal moving forward, with a TDP of 10-15W (likely closer to 15 in the near future with 10w in the next 3-5 years) 2. PCs are going to become slimmer, faster and smaller and use less power overall, eg MBA3. Tablet growth is steady, and intel believes that the main innovations/advancements will be in devices that are/will be targeted at the affluent (>100,000 p/y income) 4.Tablets have seen a spike in growth since the ipad, however that can be seen as an outlier as overall growth has been steady. 5. Intel is pushing what we already knew - Tablets, in their current and short-medium term incarnations are not designed to replace the desktop.

What I can extrapolate from the article:1. Cloud computing with intensive apps will become bigger, as desktop/laptop/notebook PCs no longer will have/need the power that they currently do (heck I am still running a 2.66 c2d and it is more than powerful enough for my needs)2. Bandwidth limitations of wireless devices is becoming less and less of a problem, with new technologies which supports point 1.3. Windows is becoming chip independent (duh, it'd be silly for Microsoft not to do this) and as a result of operating systems becoming more agnostic on the whole. Which means more competition for intel (at last).4. Joe Average user doesn't need a full operating system for most of their activities. Which means for more people a closed(clean?) system such as MacOS X will appeal to more users.

Intel's lack of ambitious Atom development the past 5 years cost them marketshare. Intel moves to 22nm next January, and only at the end of this year does Atom move from 45nm to 32nm. As long as Intel treats Atom as the red headed step child, it will perform like the red headed step child.

In other news, HP's shipments of home computers was down dramatically in the results they announced today. The jury might be out on if tablets are here to stay, but they are going to be the hot thing the next three years.

The stress on -lack- of mention of iPad, is to highlight how Intel refused to acknowledge its existence, even though iPad is the 'major player' in the current Tablet market; IOS is similarly "major", compared to Android or Windows Mobile, but wasn't mentioned. Significantly, iPad doesn't use Intel gear, so they're avoiding it like the plague. It's just an example of corporate spin, really. Dumb corporate spin at that, if they don't include mention of THE major player in the markets they're trying to expand into.

That is, the article stressed 'what about the iPad, eh, Intel?', and then went on to reflect what Intel said (rather than what iPad could/couldn't 'do').

Dismissing it as a puff piece for Apple/iPad is disingenuous; there are rabid Apple fan-boys, and there are rabid anti-Apple haters, I don't think either group is going to win any friends/converts by public sneering at the other group.

This post hits it on the head.

As far as not mentioning the iPad goes, that's actually sensible marketing from Intel. Mentioning it by name has the effect of reminding people that their rival has a strong product (it's like politics! Never repeat the allegations). On top of that, by doing it this way they can say that they're aiming to compete with tablets and decrease the chance of people taking away that "we're butthurt about the iPad and so we're telling you that we can beat it".

4. Joe Average user doesn't need a full operating system for most of their activities. Which means for more people a closed(clean?) system such as MacOS X will appeal to more users.

Since when has OS X not been a "full operating system." It was last time I used it.

Sorry I didn't write that as well as I should have (had two thoughts at once)

I meant

4. Joe average user doesn't need a full operating system for most of their activities - so something like iOS/Android should suffice for day-to-day activities5. Closed ecosystems like iOS and MacOS will become more prevalent in future partly due to the above.

I'd really like a very powerful art/music tablet myself. One with pencil resolution and good art tools. And one that say runs an Ableton like music software with also live play instruments and you can plug in USB/Midi controllers. That I'd gladly pay a reasonable amount for $1k-2K but I'd like the $500 or less range to do a lot of that also.

What'd be even COOLER is if we made the swine dump their false economies and ship jobs back to the USA. Note that it costs more or less the SAME as it would overseas versus the USA. Yeah we are whiny socialists that want "Rights" and safe working conditions and living wages and stuff. BUT, for all the savings of that an overseas trip usually costs more in piracy, bribery, quality and the cost of transport. They get the difference paid in "Tax breaks and subsidies". It should be fraud, if not treason, this "Business".

And, if it's the same cost, same subsides, well if you have the plant in America because they SELL to Americans, the money circulates in America and the economy GROWS...

I'd really like a very powerful art/music tablet myself. One with pencil resolution and good art tools. And one that say runs an Ableton like music software with also live play instruments and you can plug in USB/Midi controllers. That I'd gladly pay a reasonable amount for $1k-2K but I'd like the $500 or less range to do a lot of that also.

What'd be even COOLER is if we made the swine dump their false economies and ship jobs back to the USA. Note that it costs more or less the SAME as it would overseas versus the USA. Yeah we are whiny socialists that want "Rights" and safe working conditions and living wages and stuff. BUT, for all the savings of that an overseas trip usually costs more in piracy, bribery, quality and the cost of transport. They get the difference paid in "Tax breaks and subsidies". It should be fraud, if not treason, this "Business".

And, if it's the same cost, same subsides, well if you have the plant in America because they SELL to Americans, the money circulates in America and the economy GROWS...

It's interesting how it seems intel's also caught up in the hype of the so called tablets and "post-PC era".

I noticed a lot of people on the web talking about the "average" user and how these people no longer needs a PC, and no longer needs faster computers. And when I think about it for a bit it appears to be a selective myopic view point.

First I think about what an average user really is. I thought about my mom, my sister, my brother and my dad. And none of them can do without a PC. My mom uses it for her job as a teacher to create material for her students, my sister runs a blog about wedding stuff, my brother trades stock online and (much to his baptist christian embarrassment) download and watch porn, and my Dad's trading stocks some 5 hours a day now that he's retired. All of these activities needs a PC right now. Some would argue that tablets will be able to become more usable for things like these but I don't think so and I'll get back to why in a bit.

Being unable to think of any one fitting this so called "average" user in my related family I start to think of people I know who might fit this mold. Well i can think of my fiancee who indeed does fit this mold of a person who don't often need a full blown computer but even she doesn't fit perfectly. She trades stocks and does web banking both of which is still not easier to do on a tablet/smartphone than on a PC. She does fit in that she doesn't often need to turn on her computer. Once or twice a week is usually enough for her. However, I do think that's partly cause she does a lot of her PC needs at work. So she isn't a perfect fit for this "average" mold so does a tablet still fit her? Well no. Because her interest in technology and involvement in technological uses is so low she has low interest in spending the money on getting new technology. To her a TV is preferable to an iPad. To her an LV bag is preferable to an iPad.

So is there any other person I know who fits this average user profile and will buy an iPad? Honestly, I can't think of anyone. Maybe my grandmother or a relative of that generation. But again those people are not likely to know what an iPad is and unlike to go get one themselves. But you know my fiancee's dad who's quite a bit older than my parents does enjoy using his ipod touch quite a bit. Is this the "average" user that everyone speaks of? That would be funny.

From my point of view it seems silly that all these companies are hyped about an "average" user who will ditch a powerful personal computer for just a tablet. I don't see many people who are actually technophiles being a single device person. And I bet most of us here would be quite put off if forced to only use a tablet for a month. Of course there will be a lot of believers who thinks they can. Well if you really want to prove that why not try it out? Nothing but a tablet and a smartphone for a month. After that try it for 2 months, 3 months? And when I say nothing but a tablet I mean you can't use your work computer for things you'd do at home on your own full blown computer.

Anyhow so back to to thing about tablets and usability. It's not going to happen unless tablets get more and more like laptops. There's no if or buts about it. You can't add all the features we take for granted (example: copy and image from a web browser and pasting it into your mail client) in a fully featured OS to a mobile OS without adding bloat. Cause to add this feature you need an entire framework of software loaded in the background running, taking up memory and processor cycle. So the more full featured a tablet OS gets the more powerful the hardware has to be. And there's still no way to get around if you have certain amount of processing power you burn more power. So those devices are going to have to get heavier unless we get new battery tech. Already people are experimenting with keyboards for tablets. Really if you are going to carry a tablet with it's keyboard dock with you. Isn't a macbook air more or less the same thing?

And that last idea is why I think it's strange what intel plans to do. They are going to lower their TDP over each new process improvements. That means they are going to take all the power efficiency gains from their new process to lower power consumption without really improving the performance of their chips. We see this already where ULV chips are the slowest of all their siblings of an intel generation. This I feel is a great way for intel to play right into the hands of ARM. This is intel being a stationary target. And stationary targets get hit.

Granted, I do realize that intel can lower it's power usage while still making performance improvements. However, that's going to be a harder balancing act than keeping your power goals the same and making improvements that are meaningful to users. Remember TDP and idle power are 2 different things. TDP is the ceiling. Lowering the ceiling is going to reduce top end performance possible. It seems to me maybe the better solution is a range of chips some for ultra low power and some for performance. After all not every one's needs are met by a prius.

I do think it's worth mentioning that intel apparently avoided talking about the iPad; but I don't think we need to be told about how awesome the iPad is every second sentence. I suspect the author of this article has a lot more interest in the iPad than I do. iPad iPad iPad.

Terribly written article, one of the worst I've ever seen on ARS. Spelling mistakes galore, flat out bias commentary, and a title that has little to do with the content presented.

This is barely even blog worthy, let alone ARS news article worthy.

Clearly the iPad is a vast success, and I'm sure Intel is trying to ignore it, but surely it does not deserve over a half of an article with a title that presents as though the article is solely about Intel?

Yep, these are exiting times i think with the release of their "3D" transistor they've finally let the cat out of the bag (which I wouldn't be surprised they had in there for quite some time), things are going to change a huge amount in the next 5 years. Good performance with good battery life is finally upon us in a small form factor which can easily supply needs of what people use PC's for 95% of the time.

My personal dream of a tablet is that the hardware gets small enough, cool enough and powerful enough that I can carry around a say 8" one with me everywhere I go yet there is a slot in it for a real physical keyboard, maybe ultra-thin that pulls out as you would a stylus and also a functional micro mouse, or it could be combined in the keyboard like laptops do; there will also be a kickstand on the back for me to set up anywhere.

Soon everyone is going to have one of these things, on a side note I can see why Nintendo's sweating the relevancy of its underpowered 3DS and other handhelds in the future.

Terribly written article, one of the worst I've ever seen on ARS. Spelling mistakes galore, flat out bias commentary, and a title that has little to do with the content presented.

This is barely even blog worthy, let alone ARS news article worthy.

Clearly the iPad is a vast success, and I'm sure Intel is trying to ignore it, but surely it does not deserve over a half of an article with a title that presents as though the article is solely about Intel?

Terribly written article, one of the worst I've ever seen on ARS. Spelling mistakes galore, flat out bias commentary, and a title that has little to do with the content presented.

This is barely even blog worthy, let alone ARS news article worthy.

Clearly the iPad is a vast success, and I'm sure Intel is trying to ignore it, but surely it does not deserve over a half of an article with a title that presents as though the article is solely about Intel?

Gonna have to agree with this.

I think Apple got "overplayed" becuase not only the normal talk about apple in this market had to be there, but also the analysis of Intel trying to completely ignore them and all the angles with that. Listen, I hate Apple but personally I don't think he overdid it, it was well written, the situation and other factors called for a little but more analyses.

It's interesting how it seems intel's also caught up in the hype of the so called tablets and "post-PC era".

I noticed a lot of people on the web talking about the "average" user and how these people no longer needs a PC, and no longer needs faster computers. And when I think about it for a bit it appears to be a selective myopic view point.

With all due respect, I think you're missing the point.

We are not saying "the pc is now redundant, we have tablets". Tablets are there to supplement pcs and phones - go watch the preso that Steve Jobs did when the ipad was released and he explains how the ecosystem works. Sure that may sound fanboyish, but he has a point.

We are saying that for the "average user" like your dad, or your fiance, or your sister, who do not do heavy cad, or gaming, or stuff like that - a scaled down pc like a Net-top or netbook level of power is more than enough. Your dad can trade on a dual atom easily, your fiancé can do her banking and browsing, and word processing. Your mum can create what she needs on a net-top easily enough.

Indeed for my use, aside from graphic heavy presentations (which I do very few of), and gaming, an atom/nettop/netbook power would be more than enough to satisfy my needs.

Many websites could be easily hosted by atom servers also. (consider massive clusters of atoms and you're starting to get where all of it is going)

The idea behind the article is primarily intel saying "we realise this, and our goal is to bring the power usage down for the average user" - Which in turn means longer battery life for portables and more portability.

Tablets are fun toys, and for a very select group useful tools, but they by definition lack properties that make laptops and desktops useful - precise control, physical keyboards, processing power.

The real market to watch, IMHO, will be the laptop market. Watch for the new ULV processors to not suck, to make laptops light and sport great battery life. This is critical as currently, they pretty much require mains power for any real work).

Laptops that are as portable as a tablet, but with a physical keyboard and open access to the apps people actually *work* with, that's the future - and what will gut PC sales.

The MBA is a very good example, and as more manufacturers push into that market it should get very interesting.

"""He dropped the names Android, Meego, and Windows quite a bit. Not one of these is even close to being a compelling iOS alternative at the moment,"""

Says who? Android may be behind, but not by much. It already overtook iOS in phones, and I'm not talking about marketshare: I find android is vastly more comfortable to use already, and without that stinking feeling of being herded by Apple to do what they want you to do the way they want.

It is just my opinion, but it is an educated one, since I had to park my Nexus One and take up an iPhone for every day use: it is an arrogant machine that treats me like an idiot, a cashcow and a thief. And that attitude is reflected in poor design choices in the physical and OS design: the single button, the absence of a card reader, the keyboard that imposes it's word choices and cannot be replaced, the uncustomisable home screen, the obligatoriety of iTunes, the POS multitasking, the forced Apple curation of software choices, including their ethical and moral values, you name it. If Android is a dog, iOS is a cat: pretty and independent, lives at your home but will never be yours.

By introducing the iPad, Steve Jobs wants you to get an iPhone, an iPad, and a Macbook Air for the average user. It is just not economically viable for the average user to own so many devices. As they are, tablets are in a niche position, whereas PCs (lets face facts, even the MBA is a PC) are a necessity.

That is not to say that tablets will not "cannibalize" PC sales. That could only happen if PCs and tablets converge(we are already seeing convergence in this direction with offerings from Acer, Asus, etc). That is providing that manufacturers, carriers, retailers, dealers, and anyone who would stand to profit from selling multiple devices does not stop it. Look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab (from which i read this article, but the reply is made on a laptop). I have heard that there are carriers, in the US and other countries where i do not live, who blocked its telephony capabilities so that they do not cannibalize smartphone sales. I do believe that it is partly because of this that the SGT suffered such poor sales. It is also why i believe that no one will come out with another tablet that could replace smartphones, effectively blocking convergence in that direction.

Moving forward, laptops and other forms of PCs will be either moving toward more powerful computing or converge with tablets. As for tablets, unless they successfully converge with laptops, they will have to remain in the same niche position they are now, the position where netbooks were 2-3 years ago.

PS: Remember how just a few years ago people were so sure that netbooks would replace laptops? Ah, good times.

It's interesting how it seems intel's also caught up in the hype of the so called tablets and "post-PC era".

I noticed a lot of people on the web talking about the "average" user and how these people no longer needs a PC, and no longer needs faster computers. And when I think about it for a bit it appears to be a selective myopic view point.

Funny, you sound more myopic than not.

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First I think about what an average user really is. I thought about my mom, my sister, my brother and my dad. And none of them can do without a PC.

And this is why you seem myopic. What it really seems to be is that none of them need a Core i7 with 8gb of RAM and 1TB of storage. They don't need a quad core, they don't need SLI, etc.

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My mom uses it for her job as a teacher to create material for her students, my sister runs a blog about wedding stuff, my brother trades stock online and (much to his baptist christian embarrassment) download and watch porn, and my Dad's trading stocks some 5 hours a day now that he's retired.

The only people that need a PC is your mom, since her programs to create material probably don't exist on the iPad. Everything else you've mentioned works quite well on an iPad.

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All of these activities needs a PC right now. Some would argue that tablets will be able to become more usable for things like these but I don't think so and I'll get back to why in a bit.

In case you weren't aware, the iPad has HDMI output and support for 1920x1080 resolution as well as keyboard input. My 24" iMac is only 1920x1200, so it's not like the iPad is terribly low resolution.

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You can't add all the features we take for granted (example: copy and image from a web browser and pasting it into your mail client) in a fully featured OS to a mobile OS without adding bloat. Cause to add this feature you need an entire framework of software loaded in the background running, taking up memory and processor cycle. So the more full featured a tablet OS gets the more powerful the hardware has to be.

Uh, yeah, iOS can do that. In fact it's had this feature for a year now.

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And there's still no way to get around if you have certain amount of processing power you burn more power. So those devices are going to have to get heavier unless we get new battery tech. Already people are experimenting with keyboards for tablets. Really if you are going to carry a tablet with it's keyboard dock with you. Isn't a macbook air more or less the same thing?

It costs twice as much and has half the battery life of an iPad+keyboard. You tell me, is that the same thing?

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And that last idea is why I think it's strange what intel plans to do. They are going to lower their TDP over each new process improvements. That means they are going to take all the power efficiency gains from their new process to lower power consumption without really improving the performance of their chips. We see this already where ULV chips are the slowest of all their siblings of an intel generation. This I feel is a great way for intel to play right into the hands of ARM. This is intel being a stationary target. And stationary targets get hit.

I think Intel is the stationary target here. They won't be in the same power ballpark until 2013, while ARM is already there and doubling their performance every year. This year it's dual core A9, next year it's dual core A15, and the year after that it's quad core A15, all in a comfortable 10 hour battery life.

By introducing the iPad, Steve Jobs wants you to get an iPhone, an iPad, and a Macbook Air for the average user. It is just not economically viable for the average user to own so many devices. As they are, tablets are in a niche position, whereas PCs (lets face facts, even the MBA is a PC) are a necessity.

The cheapest MBA is $999, the cheapest iPad is $499. The cheapest iPhone is $49 on 2 year contract, in the US. If you're going to talk about economically viable, the iPad + 4 year old computer is more economically viable than an MBA.

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That is not to say that tablets will not "cannibalize" PC sales. That could only happen if PCs and tablets converge(we are already seeing convergence in this direction with offerings from Acer, Asus, etc).

We're seeing it on the iPad, too! HDMI output, keyboard dock, etc.

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Moving forward, laptops and other forms of PCs will be either moving toward more powerful computing or converge with tablets. As for tablets, unless they successfully converge with laptops, they will have to remain in the same niche position they are now, the position where netbooks were 2-3 years ago.

PS: Remember how just a few years ago people were so sure that netbooks would replace laptops? Ah, good times.

You have it totally backward. Didn't you read the Intel article? Moving forwards, laptops and other forms of PCs will be moving towards less power consumption, and will converge with tablets.

Tablets are getting more powerful, and just like the article, you ignore that 90% of tablets are iPads. And, yes, every year Apple adds more Mac OS X into iOS, so it is in fact converging with laptops.

"""He dropped the names Android, Meego, and Windows quite a bit. Not one of these is even close to being a compelling iOS alternative at the moment,"""Says who? Android may be behind, but not by much.

Absolutely agree - though I have an iPad I've played with Honeycomb and find it a joy to use - the lack of apps is the only thing that delays my switching - but that's just a matter of time, I expected to ditch the iPad for an Android tablet in about a year.

Lobotomik wrote:

If Android is a dog, iOS is a cat: pretty and independent, lives at your home but will never be yours.

I've no issue with the appleipadappleappleappleappleipad spin on the article - it made it interesting - however the lack of reference to where intels roadmap will be in comparison to other chip foundrys gave a bit of a narrow field of view.

Yes, the iPad is a thorn in the lions claw, but what does all this mean for AMD? - intel's roadmap sounds so aggressive I wondered if they should shut up shop now..

Maybe more importantly is this (ULV, getting smaller faster) expected to give intel parity in pure performance with ARM? Can they even wipe out ARM's advantage of simpler more modern design by pure production superiority, or no..

ULV is interesting but as far as the whole laptops vs. tablets argument goes, its kind of beside the point.

Processors are not the key difference between tablets and PC's. A lot of other things contribute to it much more:

A multi purpose machine like a PC (of any kind) has a lot of components that are there to address a multitude of complex needs, while a simple appliance like a tablet does a few things and does them reasonably well, costing less, and having much much better portability.

PC's need hard disks with enough space for people to store all their photos, videos and music on a semi permanent basis - more than 16-64GB and at the moment still a mechanical drive to keep costs down.

They need GPUs capable of playing popular games (DirectX 10) and video acceleration at 1080p (tablets cannot yet do that).

Then there's the OS - multi purpose machines need full-fledged OS's like Windows/OSX/Linux - these usually need 2-4GB RAM these days - a lot more than any tablet.

All the above, use power, generate heat, and increase cost, and when you miniaturize them to fit an portable, they increase cost even more.

That's what makes laptops need large battery packs, heavy power bricks, increase their weight to 1.5KG+ and vent enough heat that they can't be easily made smaller than a certain size. It's also what limits battery power to half of what a tablet does.

No matter what intel does in ULV there are other limits to what you can do with a laptop, assuming reasonable costs - true there are laptops that manage to be superslim, light and have large SSD's, great battery life, and CPU power and for $2K they can be yours.

The key point though is that this expensive machine is made to satisfy the complex needs of a few, not the simple needs of the many.

Consider the question of what is a laptop really fit for? It's useful for people who want to produce content and do complex activity from multiple locations or on the go. While that's a lot more people today than 10 years ago, it's still a actually a lot less than most assume, and remains a niche compared to the mass market.

What's behind the belief that tablets will outpace laptop growth, is the fact that laptops today are used for many things, that they are NOT by definition really for:

Laptops are not made to be a small home PC for women who don't like ugly midi towers, they are not for people who want to check email and surf on the go, they are not made for surfing from the couch or for people whose needs are light and mainly content consumption than creation.

The group of people who don't really need a laptop includes a surprisingly large number of corporate execs - the folks who rely on their blackberries for email, usually find a tablet to be a great luxury, but few of them miss the ability to create complex powerpoint presentations or excel spreadsheets - they are more likely to just read them, which you can do fine on a tablet.

If you look at the % of people who are real road warriors, they are actually much fewer than most think. Except for when I worked in consulting, which by definition is a mobile job, I find not more than 10-20% of the total employees of any company I worked really need a laptop.

It goes without saying that the netbook is a dead duck.

Moreover I believe within 3-4 years the hardware and software will exist for tablets to effectively replace more than half the laptops out there - a case that converts to a keyboard, better office suites and exchange server integration - better interoperability with corporate networks and that's about it. Not really hard to implement and still for a lower price and much greater portability than the average laptop. Essentially the form factors will converge but I believe today's laptop will again become a niche product, like it was 10 years ago.

By introducing the iPad, Steve Jobs wants you to get an iPhone, an iPad, and a Macbook Air for the average user. It is just not economically viable for the average user to own so many devices. As they are, tablets are in a niche position, whereas PCs (lets face facts, even the MBA is a PC) are a necessity.

That is not to say that tablets will not "cannibalize" PC sales. That could only happen if PCs and tablets converge(we are already seeing convergence in this direction with offerings from Acer, Asus, etc). That is providing that manufacturers, carriers, retailers, dealers, and anyone who would stand to profit from selling multiple devices does not stop it. Look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab (from which i read this article, but the reply is made on a laptop). I have heard that there are carriers, in the US and other countries where i do not live, who blocked its telephony capabilities so that they do not cannibalize smartphone sales. I do believe that it is partly because of this that the SGT suffered such poor sales. It is also why i believe that no one will come out with another tablet that could replace smartphones, effectively blocking convergence in that direction.

Moving forward, laptops and other forms of PCs will be either moving toward more powerful computing or converge with tablets. As for tablets, unless they successfully converge with laptops, they will have to remain in the same niche position they are now, the position where netbooks were 2-3 years ago.

PS: Remember how just a few years ago people were so sure that netbooks would replace laptops? Ah, good times.

There are two types of users, casual, and power users. Casual users live in the browser, power users live in the programs. I remember not too long ago when I would not consider working of a laptop, it was simply not powerful enough, today I work solely of my MBP, largely thanks to my SSD upgrade. Everything else, I do on my iPad.

I see very little difference between a laptop and a tablet? The OS is the major hurdle! I can't install windows, which I need for work, and performance needs a boost. I already use an external monitor and keyboard, and I hate lugging around my MBP. My prediction, what we call tablets will replace laptops, especially if we could get around to JS2, and get a real development language. Intel needs to innovate and stop being so married to the X86 line.

So, even an article about Intel chips still is 1/2 about iPad advertisement.

I bet that just REALLY annoys you .

But the point of the article is that while Intel is busy talking about "post-PC"-devices and tablets, they are strangely not talking about the iPad at all. No matter how you slice that, it's both strange and telling